On the Front Lines of the Cold War: Documents on the Intelligence War in Berlin, 1946 to 1961, Edited by Donald P. Steury, Center for the Study of Intelligence, 2007.

For nearly 50 years the German city of Berlin was the living symbol of the Cold War. The setting for innumerable films and novels about spies and Cold War espionage, Berlin was, in truth, at the heart of the intelligence war between the United States and the Soviet bloc.

For the United States and its allies, Berlin was a base for strategic intelligence collection that provided unequaled access to Soviet-controlled territory. For the Soviet Union and the captive nations of the Warsaw Pact, the presence of Western intelligence services in occupied Berlin was a constant security threat, but also an opportunity to observe their opponents in action, and possibly to penetrate their operations. Perhaps nowhere else did the Soviet and Western intelligence services confront each other so directly, or so continuously. It thus seems appropriate to refer to this situation as an "Intelligence War"; not because the conflict between the opposing services regularly erupted into organized violence, but because it was a sustained, direct confrontation that otherwise had many of the characteristics of a war...

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The editor of this volume has been given free access to official documents. He alone is responsible for the statements made and the views expressed.

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